Madame Roland: A Biographical StudyTarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
History
Madame Roland: A Biographical Study
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Roland, Madame, 1754-1793
Madame Roland’s plan had carried. Since the beginning of the Revolution
she had urged it. In 1789 when she called for “two illustrious heads,”
for “the united sections and not the Palais Royal”; throughout 1790 in
her demands for “blood, since there is nothing else to whip you and make
you go”; in her incessant preaching of civil war; in her remonstrances
in 1791 against the seizure of Marat’s sheets, against the arrest of the
turbulent, against shutting the doors of the Assembly on those who
prevented it doing its work; in the Hôtel of the Interior scoffing at
Roland’s weakness in believing in the sincerity of Louis XVI.; in urging
Servan to present his plan for a camp of twenty thousand soldiers around
Paris without the King’s knowledge; in writing the letter to the King
and in pushing Roland to present it to the Assembly; in encouraging
Barbaroux in his preparations for the 10th of August,—she had preached
the necessity and the wholesomeness of insurrection.
Throughout this period there is not a word to show that she hesitated
about the wisdom of her demand. She was convinced, and never wavered. It
was her conviction which held Roland. It was her inspiration that fired
the Gironde. Now that the force that she had evoked was organized,
logically she must unite with it.
Roland began his ministry consistently enough. Within twelve hours after
his appointment he had changed every one in his bureaux suspected of
sympathy with the constitution. He wrote immediately to the departments
describing the Revolution and sending copies of “all the laws and all
the pieces relative to the great discoveries of the 10th of August,” and
lest the people should not hear of them, he urged the curés and
officials to read them aloud whenever they could secure a gathering of
people.
Everywhere in the departments he upheld the Jacobin party. Thus at Lyons
where the directory of Rhone-et-Sâone had been continually at war with
the municipality because of its moderation, the former body was deposed
and the latter put into power with the compliment that in all cases it
had maintained peace and tranquillity in spite of the fanaticism of the
enemies of the Revolution. Chalier, who came to Paris to represent the
municipality,—Chalier, who believed that calm could only be obtained in
Lyons by filling the streets with “impure blood” and who led in the
horrible massacres of the city,—was, through Roland’s influence, sent
home “with honors.”
Never was Roland’s energy greater. He worked twenty hours out of
twenty-four, and even his four hours of repose were often interrupted.
By the 20th of August he was able to present the Assembly with a report
on the condition of France. In all his work he was logically in harmony
with the Second Revolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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